In the cardholder service industry, there exists a need to improve the quality and efficiency of processing workcase information such as customer complaints, customer billing, and payment processing. In this industry, the service provider must handle a great number of inquiries. Service representatives receive requests for information over the telephone and through the mail. The service provider also receives information, letters of complaint, and payment checks from cardholders. A central department of the service provider may also receive billing data and credit charges from other departments. All of this workcase information, which can be quite substantial in volume, must be processed by the service provider.
Currently, the service industry does much of the workcase information processing manually. The different types of incoming mail such as checks or letters of complaint are currently separated manually. Manual labor is then used to enter most of the data into a database, and to store the original copies of the data in a folder containing other documents with customer information. Often, these files are stored on microfiche and are not easily retrievable from storage. Retrieving files from storage can increase the time needed for a service representative to complete processing a workcase. In addition, statistics on the type of workcases that the representative processes are not easily obtainable in a manual processing system.
Automation and utilization of digital storage and retrieval technology would make workcase information processing much more efficient. An improvement upon the current system would provide cardholder services with a system that includes support for document scanning, automated rules-based workcase processing, statistical reporting, document generation, and document archival and retrieval capabilities.